Mess Of The Week: Promenade P-U!
“Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived”- Helen Keller
“Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days.”- Benjamin Franklin
This week’s mess isn’t one you can easily see. However, much like New Jersey, you know it’s there because you can smell it.
The scoop on this sour smell comes courtesy of an e-mail from reader Pamela. Pamela lives in the 70’s off Bay Parkway and enjoys spending quality time with her husband and baby on the promenade that runs along the Belt Parkway. Lately, Pamela’s noticed an offensive odor emanating from the area.
Hello,I love your blog! I’m hoping you can help with something I’ve noticed over the past few weeks. There is an AWFUL smell at the promenade along the Belt Parkway, at around Bay 15 street (where there’s a pedestrian bridge over the highway). It smells like sewage or maybe something rotting. Do you know what’s going on? Has anyone talked about it?Thanks, Pamela
“I don’t live too close to the smell, but I drive there often because my husband likes to run along the water and I take our baby to the little park that’s nearby,” Pamela told The Bean. “The smell has been there since at least last weekend.”
I did some poking around and realized that the sewage treatment plant fire in Harlem may be the culprit here. However, I don’t want to rule out a more local source of the odor, be it dumping, dead animals or who knows what else.
Has anyone else out there noticed the smell? If it’s due to the sewage treatment plant fire, the odor should be dissipating soon. If not, we’ll just need to keep digging until we get an answer.
Thanks for the ‘nose up,’ Pamela! Please let us know if the smell goes away and we’ll bring readers an update, along with a new mess, next week.
